The Caribbean literary project is counterdiscursive both in essence and in practice. It is how we compose and articulate ourselves. With it, we imagine the tasks of nation-building, interrogate traumatic histories, and navigate the myriad rhetorics of identity, politics, and space. A focus on affect enables fruitful enquiry within the field—and well beyond it. In response to literature’s sustained engagement with historical disease and contemporary suffering in broader social contexts, many questions emerge. Among other things, we may consider whether a heightened critical focus on affect and related embodiments of race, gender, and class could yield greater insight and depth of meaning in relation to classical and new fictional texts? Since fictional characters are by definition displaced from embodiment, how effective are the strategies used to capture affective experience within literary texts? Do texts that deviate from realist paradigms capture the depths of shame and emotion with greater effect? How best to probe the affective and aesthetic investments of readers and writers? Does critical sensitivity to intense emotion create a portal for articulation of affective assemblages of identity? In what ways does the affective focus support and / or challenge the insights of Caribbean thinkers, postcolonial, feminist and other critical schools?

The conference invites papers that include, but are not limited to topics such as:

 Caribbean poetics of affect, shame and emotion

 Trauma, sensation and corporeality

 Gendered embodiments, sexualities and eroticism

 Distance, proximity, affect and transcultural relations

 Transnational politics of empathy and ethical engagement

 Aesthetic-affective moods, modes and tones

 Affect and connectivity – non-human, impersonal and animal

 Performativity and affect

 Emotions and new media

 Rhetorics of Caribbean Fiction

 Literary Praxis

 Evolving reading practices

 Canonicity literary aesthetics and judgments

VENUE: Teaching and Learning Centre UWI St Augustine

PRESENTATIONS:

The Conference will feature a range of unique scholarly and practical presentations (workshops and demonstrations) on any of the topics described in the conference announcement. It will welcome proposals from scholars and practitioners who are involved or interested in research, discussions or activities that reflect these topics.

Presentations may be in any of the several formats listed below.

 Formal presentation using any medium – limited to 20 minutes

 Poster session – presentation/display space limited to 1.5m x 1.5m

 Panel discussion – two or three papers encompassing a range of perspectives on an issue

 Round Tables – informal presentation settings limited to 20 minutes

Performance – drama, film, audio recording, etc.

 Workshop – practical, interactive sessions limited to 2 hours

What to submit:

The proposal should identify the issue and/or topic and presentation type and should include information on resources/facilities that would be required. Submit an abstract of no more than 250 words and a bio of no more than 150 words. Where there are co-presenters, submit a bio for each presenter.

We at JWIL extend condolences to the family, friends and students of Dr. Giselle Rampaul, a Lecturer in Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus. Her untimely passing robs the Caribbean community of an influential teacher and scholar. Dr. Rampaul was a leading expert on Caribbean re-readings of Shakespeare. She was also the founder and producer of “The Spaces between Words: Conversations with Writers” podcast series which has released interviews with ninety-seven writers and poets to date. Jeremy Poynting of Peepal Tree Press writes, “One of Giselle’s lasting contributions to the building of an infrastructure for writing in the Caribbean was as the founder and producer of The Spaces between Words: Conversations with Writers podcast series. This gave writers an endorsement they appreciated, brought their books to the attention of a wider circle of readers and left a valuable archive of sensitive and probing interviews for future generations.”